[Question] Communication habits in online games

Hi!

I’m a graduate student writing a thesis on the communication that takes place during multiplayer online games. For part of the project I’d like to get some feedback from actual game players, and Gamingforce seems like a good place to do that. If you’re 18 or over (my university only allows me to survey adults, sorry), I’d appreciate it if you could take the time to fill out this short (10 question) survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=423502911938

(Link fixed to properly work.)

Along with that, what kind of communication experiences have you had in online games? What games do you play, and what do you notice about the way people communicate in them? Anyone can answer these, not just the people over 18.


For me, I mostly play Counter-Strike: Source right now and hope to get into Battlefield soon, but I’ve spent a lot of time playing Ragnarok Online and Silkroad. I've noticed that in CSS, on public servers, there’s not a whole lot of strategizing and most of the talk is pretty casual and laid back. In roleplaying games, I’ve noticed that people tend to talk a lot more seriously and tend to spend most of the time talking about how they need help in the game or are looking for equipment and people to join their party. I’d imagine it strongly depends on how well you know the other people and what your reason for playing is, but unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of experience with it since I’ve only recently gotten into online gaming and usually play solo.

Thanks for your help!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Thanks for the responses everyone; you've been a big help! A lot of the responses are similar to the experiences that I've had. For instance, I also have noticed that people are a bit more hot-tempered in FPS, so maybe it's an adrenaline rush or something? There is something exciting about them, but maybe because I'm a girl I'm able to not let things get to me and I can just laugh off a bad night? On the other hand, I find RPGs a bit boring and only really enjoy them when I'm playing with my friends.

Devoxy, I found your post especially interesting. The few times I have told people I'm a girl (most often in CSS), they just didn't believe me and thought that I was just some guy trying to be funny. I was going to try an experiment where I would go on two different servers to see the reactions. On one I'd play badly and say I'm a girl, and on the other I'd play well and say I'm a girl. Unfortunately my school didn't let me do this without consent, which would have made the experiment not work anyway. If anyone has ever tried this, let me know!

There's nowhere I can't reach.